Trump campaign says it will sue filmmakers behind ‘The Apprentice’ movie for including ‘blatantly false assertions’

Former President Trump’s reelection campaign plans to sue the filmmakers behind the new biopic film “The Apprentice,” which follows his early years in the real estate business, for including what it calls “blatantly false assertions.” 

“We will be filing a lawsuit to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers,” Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement to The Hill. “This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalizes lies that have been long debunked. As with the illegal Biden Trials, this is election interference by Hollywood elites, who know that President Trump will retake the White House and beat their candidate of choice because nothing they have done has worked.”

“This ‘film’ is pure malicious defamation, should not see the light of day, and doesn’t even deserve a place in the straight-to-DVD section of a bargain bin at a soon-to-be-closed discount movie store, it belongs in a dumpster fire,” Cheung continued.

“The Apprentice,” directed by Ali Abbassi, premiered Monday at the Cannes Film Festival, where it reportedly received an eight-minute standing ovation. It stars Sebastian Stan as a then-New York real estate developer Trump and Jeremy Strong of “Succession” as the future president’s real-life former attorney and mentor Roy Cohn.

Reports quickly circulated following Monday’s premiere, claiming the film depicted Trump, his working relationship with Cohn and his relationship with his first wife, Ivana, in an unfavorable light.

At Monday’s premiere, Abbassi recalled, “When we did this movie, everyone said, ‘Why do you want to make a movie with Trump? You know, if you want to tell something about the world, do it in a nice way, in a metaphorical way.'”

But, he said to applause, “There is no nice, metaphorical way to deal with the rising wave of fascism. The messy way, the banal way, is only the way of dealing with this wave on its own terms, at its own level.”

“It’s not going to be pretty,” he added, “but I think the problem with the world is that the good people have been quiet for too long.”

Hours before its Monday premiere, Variety reported that Dan Snyder, the billionaire investor in the film, was not happy with its final creative direction. Sources told the outlet that Snyder, the former owner of the Washington Commanders and a friend of Trump, invested in the biopic through film company Kinematics because he thought it would be a flattering depiction of the former president. 

When he saw a cut of the film in February, he was reportedly furious, and Kinematics’s lawyers were brought in in an attempt to stop the film’s release, Variety reported. Kinematics President Emanuel Nuñez said the creative disagreement between the company and filmmakers did not involve Snyder.

The Hill reached out to Tailored Films, one of the listed producers of the film.